Book #45 of 2024: If It Bleeds

[thistlechaser]

If It Bleeds by Stephen King.

Quick synopsis: Four novellas (or more like three novellas and a novel). Three original ones and one (the novel) about Holly Gibney (some character he's been writing mystery novels about).

Brief opinion: The first story was amazingly good. The first third of the second story was even better. I skipped the Holly Gibney one. The final one was pretty bad.

Plot: By story:

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone: Such a great story for so many reasons! It took place in the very early days of smartphones, so it was so fun to experience the wonder of them again (the internet in your hand!). The characters and relationship were wonderful, too.

Supposedly it was a scary story, but it wasn't at all scary to me (and I'm a chicken).

The Life of Chuck: This was split into three acts. The first one (the final days of the Earth destroying itself) was so so so SO good. The last days before the Internet dies. The last days of electric power. So dark, so good.

If only the story had ended there, but there was two-thirds more of it that moved back in time from that point. I saw no reason for those other two-thirds other than padding the story.

If It Bleeds: The Holly Gibney one. It was set between books 4 and 5 of the series. I hadn't read them and wasn't interested in them, and per other reviews you needed to read the books to follow this story, so I skipped it.

Rat: This story outright annoyed me. It was so unoriginal -- it felt like a couple stories King wrote before, that other people wrote before, and fairy tales (that last one was on purpose by King).

A writer is never able to finish his stories, he nearly goes insane (literally, mentally insane) trying to finish them. He goes up to a cabin in the backwoods of Maine to write, gets trapped by a storm, and starts going crazy again. (Ho hum, nothing new.) A magic rat shows up and offers to give the writer the ability to finish his book if he agrees that his friend (who has cancer) will die in exchange. Writer agrees.

Turns out the friend dies in a car accident instead. And for some reason writer guy gets all pissed off because he assumed the friend would die of cancer. Which made no sense at all, because what did it matter how the friend died?

Writing/editing: Stephen King is an amazing writer (he has more than 50 years of experience doing it, after all). He also has an army of editors (last count I saw was seven per book). Even as long as this book was, I didn't spot one editing issue.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: It's disappointing that the longest story in the book was a Holly Gibney one.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 3 stars / Okay, based on the average rating by story:

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved

The Life of Chuck: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay, averaged out from:
Act 1: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved
Act 2: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked
Act 3: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

If It Bleeds: N/A

Rat: ⭐️ - Hated